Health professions education in 2025 – technology push and evolving competencies

Post 2020, health professions education (HPE) underwent rapid digital expansion driven largely by necessity of the COVID-19 pandemic. Institutions implemented online teaching, provisional assessment adaptations and ad-hoc uses of digital tools. Many of those digital interventions became mainstay changing the HPE landscape forever. It brought many advantages yet issues like systematic curriculum redesign remained addressed inadequately (Grainger, et al., 2024; Htay, et al., 2025). By contrast, 2025 showed a shift toward integration of technology and a move from tool adoption to educational alignment, particularly in areas where medicine, nursing, public health and allied health share competency goals (Nyoni & Asamani, 2025). Among the technologies, use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in various pedagogical domains of HPE rose exponentially in 2025 and a shift from it being a supplemental resource to an element requiring structured governance, curricular mapping and rigorous evaluation is observed (Issa, et al., 2024). Similarly, emerging work on blended and experiential models in HPE training illustrates how technological tools are increasingly embedded within broader pedagogical strategies. The year 2025 represented a transition from improvisational innovation in technology toward intentional, programme-level reform and introduced themes of equity and sustainable implementation (Naidu & Ramani, 2024).